Interview with Vivian Chinasa Ezugha

Q: What is your process like when you make a performance, from idea to actual work?

My process of making performance starts as a dream like vision. I go through the performance in my mind before I give birth to the idea. An idea for a performance may only exist as a drawing before it materialises, usually I draw my intention, then I perform. I see myself as a cello tape.

Q: Can you tell about your latest project?

My latest project ABAB( Arse Butt Arse Butt) steams from my ongoing research on the identity and culture of the black female. Most of my work tends to be about the black female and the politics of her body and this project is a project that drives this notion forward.

“Those plastic jellies, wiggling like dynamitesJuices of death, their asses look like cement.Catch me in Great BritainSee me in FranceShow me in the human zoo of assesLook at me on vogue that ass looks like Africa”

Q: What role does performance art have in your life / artistic praxis? Do you also work within other fields, like installation, sculpture, drawing, and other expressions? How do they influence / inform each other?

Performance is the language I use to communicate my world in this world. I am NOT political but I have been made political, I am not historical but my history is all over Europe. Yet in this I am not respected, protected or loved. The nature of the black female is one of many fluxes; in this, performance becomes a voyage in identifying a space for truth and a space to share.I use drawing, video and sound to form a visual repertoire; for me as an artist trained in Fine Art, my way of seeing is influenced by images as moving forms.

I look to create an image, be it disturbing or what one might call beautiful; I am seeking to create a composition that moves between spaces.Thus performance is a way of living, its perhaps the only language that is universal and can shake and consume the foundation of misogyny.